Maisie Lloyd
I'm passionate about recording the world, but most of all driven by creativity and collaborative environments. My experience revolves around the production of digital content, pertaining to graphic design, writing copy, and video and audio content.
Google exploits AI capabilities to spot and remove fake reviews in a bid to protect brands’ reputations and customer experiences. Google has stated that 45% of fake reviews have been extracted from search and maps.
Negative fake reviews can harm a brand’s online reputation. Impacting the way audiences perceive businesses can cause losses to revenue, tarnishing the rapport of the customer and their trust in the brand.
How does Google AI detect fake reviews?
The algorithmic feature was created and used initially in 2023, with Google seeing approximately 20 million reviews per day. Developers analysed patterns and techniques honed by scammers and fraudulent reviewers.
Teams identified sectors which are targeted and the method in which they are targeting to teach the AI how to recognise patterns. One factor was the repeat offenders who were identified to comment on the same negative/positive reviews across multiple brands or for the same brand repeatedly. The second factor the AI considers is the volume of 1-star and 5-star reviews.
Google discusses this in-depth in their blog.
How do fake reviews impact businesses?
Reviews can be highly influential on where a customer chooses to spend their money, which is why the reviews that are made must be authentic.
False reviews can be harmful to the customer experience in two ways. The first is with positive reviews, they don’t need to be bad to impact the way audiences perceive brands. It has been acknowledged that positive reviews can have a negative impact on customers, leading them to believe that brands are better received by other customers than they actually are.
Negative reviews are just as damaging but impact the business predominantly. It can impact their reputation which can taint the trust a customer has towards a brand. Customers not trusting brands is poor for brands trying to successfully generate money and grow their customer base.
Faux reviews correlate to poor ranking on the search engine results page, the negative reputation is not beneficial to browsers, and therefore it is pushed lower on the rank.
Revenue loss is one of the worst outcomes for a business on the receiving end of false reviews. This can have various implications on a business, such as not having the funds to continue employing staff or maintaining stock. This poses risks to a business’s longevity, as a major loss in revenue is bound to impact the function of a business.
